I thought ww'ing was supposed to be relaxing...

[Bruce King]

My first two work benches started with huge crates that my marble and granite tiles came in back in 2001 when granite slabs were very expensive. I braced them inside then put two layers of plywood on top with a replaceable sheet of hardboard over that. They were very hard to slide on the concrete but still moveable. I had a huge buffet straddling them once. There was storage inside and the edges all overlapped for clamping things. I gave them away when I moved.

[Brandon Hanley]

Sorry for my lack of responses, my email notifications have apparently been going to spam or something I had no idea there were any replies let alone three pages of them. I am using my smartphone and I'm not sure I will be able to get the multi reply to work very well but I'm going to get started working on replies so there may be multiple posts in a row from me.

[Brandon Hanley]

Some folks build a prototype out of construction grade lumber before they use good hardwood. That way they can work out joint designs and measurements without destroying finish wood.

YOu can also buy complete plans which will tell you what materials you need, the cutting order and complete dimensions for each piece.

Or learn 3D cad and start designing each piece.

I definitely need to start using cheaper materials in the future but luckily I have an abundance of mice would right now because of an obsession I had with free and cheap logs and a chainsaw Mill a couple of summers ago. I've literally got a two-car carport, a 10 by 10 add on to the back of a shed, and a 8 ft by 24 foot wall full of maple cherry walnut and Ash slabs and for 55 gallon drums full of big cut off pieces. So although I wasted a ton of Walnut on this at least I wasn't paying by the board foot LOL

. Make stuff, flaws and all, make more stuff with fewer flaws, repeat, repeat. As woodworkers 90% of the defects we see in our projects are not visible to everyone else.

i try but have tough time with this

Working 70 hrs a week?? Give yourself a pass about getting things done in the woodshop.

Yep no typo. I work nights driving a tractor-trailer averaging 14hr days 6 days a week and have a wife and 3 little girls waiting at home. I I hate feeling like I'm wasting time so I don't sleep much. That said due to lack of sleep I admit most of the time it feels like I'm operating at about half my mental capacity lol

[Brandon Hanley]

Brandon,
I understand your predicament, stop it now! You are putting way too much pressure on yourself and taking all the enjoyment out of the process. I suggest you start with "simple" shop projects. Build shop toys (cabinets, jigs, etc.) this will assist you in developing skill sets for the projects you want to create. I have been making stuff for over 55 years (48 as a 'Professional") and still have a solid core door with a masonite surface as my main workbench, screw the fancy hardwood workbench and just create a flat work surface that you can work on.

Just do it! Make mistakes and learn! If it was easy I couldn't earn a living doing it. you live in the heart of woodworking land, there are multiple SMC members within minutes of you who would be honored to have you visit and/or mentor you.

You can contact me with any question you have at any time. BTW- Tell your wife she should be honored to have a "trinket" box that cost $40K to build. HAVE FUN, THAT'S WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT. BOTH HOBBIES AND OCCUPATION!

Just my thoughts - Bill

Most of my time in the shop over the past couple of years has come down to me trying to Mill down Live Edge slabs, or just messing around trying to get the hang of hand planes. I've also been working on actually making it a functioning wood shop since it was delivered as a two-story garage built like a giant shed. So over the past couple of years me and a friend slowly did what was needed like insulating the walls putting up pegboard wiring up lights and Outlets Plumbing a giant dust collection setup and things like that.

I actually have enough flat work space that I could work on other things. That isn't really the issue. I just can't bring myself to move on to other things because I feel like I will never finish the work bench if I do. It's been sitting on heavy duty saw horses it's whole life and I also have two of the Harbor Freight work benches fastened together upstairs if I need some bench space

[Brandon Hanley]

Most of the productive woodworkers logging billable hours like yours are insomniacs.

Have a browse of Neanderthal Haven. The approach there concentrates on the fun, quiet stuff.

Mill with machines on the weekends - saw, plane and join as an hour comes available.

Measure your wife for a coffin as your "next" project.

My shop is far enough back and insulated while I'm not off that I can run full stop all night long if I want to. Honestly though 90% of the time I'm just making shavings with a hand plane brainstorming how to do something, almost everything else that I need done ends up either being the table saw

[Brandon Hanley]

Brandon,

Woodworking is not inherently relaxing, any more than any other activity is. For any activity to be a stress reliever, you have to let the work itself be the end. Go to the shop to work with wood, not to make the best bench you can imagine, or a guitar you've been dreaming about. Make an agreement with yourself that the precision, fit and finish, and look that you are capable of achieving is the right precision and fit and finish for your project. If that's not yet what you would want it to be in the long run, make practice the purpose of your work.

Others here have pointed out some very useful ideas for how that can be. Make wooden toys. Make bluebird houses for a local Audubon project. Carve some green wood spoons, and if they turn out crooked and cracked, use them for kindling and make some more. Build more boxes. Don't be afraid to make stuff that doesn't matter too much, because the making itself is what matters. The point is to touch the wood, cut the wood, make sawdust and chips, and learn some hand skills and some "don't dos" and the feel of the tools. If you want to do this to relax, the point is to lose yourself in the process, not the thing you get at the other end. It can be that for quite a long while

I would also suggest, although I understand that your work schedule may make it impossible, that you look for classes for techniques you want to master, or maybe someone to work wood with. One of the beautiful things about classes is that they give you experienced people on on who to offload your performance anxiety for what you're doing. The instructors are there to teach, obviously, but more importantly for many people, they are there to absorb the negativity that comes from not getting stuff right - to literally be the one to say "not perfect, but good enough for where we're going, and hey, my friend, I've done worse myself."

I do relax by working in the shop - wood, metal, machine restoration, the whole lot. All of them work to relax me, not because of what I produce, but because the process of production gives my brain complete permission to be there, doing that, and having the doing be the point, and be enough.

Being okay with something being just good enough is the biggest struggle for me half the time I won't even start something if I can't wrap my head completely around it and have a plan for every step of the way before I even start but as things start to go wrong that plan branch is off in 12 different directions and before I know it I get overwhelmed and stop where I'm at and got stuck there. Luckily I have about 6 million other Hobbies bounce back and forth to. One of those was actually getting into welding a couple of years back when I built a giant steel log Arch onto to a old steel car hauler and spent two years driving around the state picking up free and cheap logs to Mill with a chainsaw Mill.

[Brandon Hanley]

So your top is ready enough and your legs have the top tenons already cut. Are these through tenons or stopped tenons? Will you able to see end grain of the legs in the bench top?

Yes that is where I'm at the plans on using from Jay's Custom Creations call for through tenon's and that was the plan. I've never heard of or considered stopped tenon's but you have me thinking now because people wouldn't be able to see I screwed up from the top LOL

What about stretchers? Are you going to have a rectangle of sticks near the ground holding each of the feet in alignment?

yes the plans call for scratchers but I wasn't going to start laying them out until I got the legs laid out and nearly fit to the table

What I would do (did) at this point is put a pair of sawhorses down roughly where your bench is going to go, and then set your top on those saw horses. Now you have a workbench. It needs better legs, and doesn't have a vise mounted to it, but you now have a place to work on the legs. You might need some clamps to hold the top to the sawhorses, and it won't be the perfect working height, but you can work on it.

it is currently on this all horses on top of a piece of plywood

Or you could put the top on the sawhorses upside down and do your stopped mortises first.

this is been the point where I was stuck and just staring at a trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to lay out and cut the mortises

I remember my first independent shift as a new grad RN. I was working 11P-7A. I had 60 beds, probably 55-58 of them occupied. The midnight med pass was about the death of me, but 2A and 4A weren't so bad. At 0500 I thought I was going to make it, until the computer popped up (@0501) all the meds I absolutely had to pass between 0500 and 0700. It was pages and pages and pages of stuff for people I had never met because they had been sleeping all night. It was one of those sink or swim moments you never forget. And I had "a moment." It didn't matter what medication I passed to who first, but I had better pass something now and keep passing stuff now or I would never get then all passed in time. That was almost 25 years ago. I clocked 65 hours this week and have made zero progress on any of my carpentry projects. I seem to have successfully avoided the pague for another week. Posting here is about as close to "woodworking" as I am going to get today.

my wife is an LPN so I totally understand that life. Between the two of our jobs I'm surprised we actually have as much time as we do together but luckily we've always been able to make our schedules lineup

Similarly, if you are still cutting joints, it doesn't matter which joint you cut next. You will not be able to put the whole thing together until all the joints are cut.

right now the only joint cut are the legs but if I do switch to stopped tenon's I'm going to have to glue those back and recut them or I would have to give up a couple inches of height

You will build more benches. What I like to do is layout all my markup for whatever phase and then come back tomorrow or next weekend and make sure my layout marks line up before cutting any joints. But that is my blindspot. I learned that by making very expensive fuel for my woodstove, but now I know it and work around it, work with it.

I've been trying to do that but my problem is when I first lay it out it seems right when I come back I start picking it apart

For workbench and up size M/T joints I do the layout, sleep on it, double check the marks on the wood line up correctly. From there I chisel to the line to cut the fibers at the surfaces and then drill baby drill. On the show sides I will often excavate the first 1/4" or so with a chisel before drilling. Drill some more, about half way through from one side, flip, about halfway through from the otherside.

this is the part I've been losing sleep over because of not wanting to make sloppy joints I haven't been able to decide how I wanted to go about cutting them although originally I started out planning to do it all with a chisel. Over the months since I've been stuck at this point I considered everything from making a template to use an electric router, using a jigsaw, cutting three sides then putting another board around each side of the table to encase the fourth side of each leg, and a million other ideas with the latest one being that I needed to invest money in a router plane since every time I come up with a new idea I decide I need more supplies and throw more money at it. LOL

Are you sure you have drilled all you can? Victory is when you have a big enough through hole for your chips to fall away rather than clutter up the working face of your mortise. Once the chips off your chisel are falling through you are home free on that one. Enjoy the process.

haven't made it that far at this point I've drawn layout lines about five times and after I get done at pee seems like I find something it isn't Square but can't figure out what it is

FWIW my bench build is here, but there is a ton of workbench build threads here, look forward to seeing yours. https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....ch-inexpensive

I'll have to check that out. I've been thinking about doing a thread showing my progress and hoping someone would walk me through the rest thinking it may cry for me to keep working on it sooner

I'm out of time for now I want to come back to reply to more when I get a chance

[Brandon Hanley]

Sometimes, I just go down there to organize things or sharpen chisels just so that the next time I need a tool I can find it and it's sharp.

Randy

i do this quite a bit

I haven't seen Brandon check back yet. I believe he has the 'analysis to paralysis' syndrome at an almost disabling level.

That's exactly what it is.

[Bruce King]

I think you need this
https://www.grizzly.com/products/gri...4aAhrkEALw_wcB

[Brandon Hanley]

What strategies have you employed in other aspects of your life to overcome/work around the ADHD you're blaming for your woodworking issues?

By the way, I like your wife's sense of humor.

Walking away for a while is all I can do and I have trouble even doing that sometimes

[Brandon Hanley]

Just finish the bench, flaws and all, and start using it. In time you'll want a different bench, you'll have worked on other projects and honed your skills and methods. I'm not saying you should do sloppy work, just do it and make mistakes, that's how you learn. If it will function, it is good enough. When you let go of "perfection" and decide to enjoy the process of creating it will become relaxing.

this is the mindset I'm trying to get into

[Brandon Hanley]

This whole process started in 1980,

as soon as i read that line I couldnt help but chuckle and think to myself that it feels like this project has been dragging on since 1980 lol

[Jim Becker]

Walking away for a while is all I can do and I have trouble even doing that sometimes

There is none among us who has not had to take a break from any avocation; sometimes it's a day or two and sometimes it's longer. My own motivation has been a bit low laterly for a number of reasons and I can think of periods of time when I didn't do much at all in the shop over the years. So it's OK to clear your head without abandoning the avocation. If after a longer period of time you don't feel the itch, then so be it. But we all have cycles in our heads that we need to listen to to be healthy.